Ice Diaries (19 page)

“How did you find out?”

“A group of people turned up
yesterday. They fetched me because one of the men had a broken nose –
quite a bad one, with displacement and bleeding that wouldn’t
stop. He was having trouble breathing.”

“Eddie. Did you meet Mike?”

“Yes.”

“He’s a psycho.”

David frowned. “He didn’t
strike me as a psychopath. He came across as a genuinely nice guy,
anxious about Eddie, and very pleased to get a doctor to him.”

“Okay, I should have said, he’s
a plausible psycho. Trust me on this.”

He looked unconvinced. David has a good
brain, and is confident about its capacities; he tends to believe his
own observations where they conflict with other people’s
experience. I’d forgotten how annoying this could be. He said,
“What about the man who smashed Eddie’s nose, is he still
here?”

“Morgan. Yes.”

“Seems to me he’s the one
who’s a psycho, if anyone is. I had quite a long talk with
Mike. He seemed eminently sane and normal to me. Caring, even. His
main concern is to protect the little group of people he’s
trying to get away from this mess.”

“In other words, he turned on the
charm and you fell for it.”

“Give me some credit, Tori, I’m
not a complete idiot.”

“I’m not saying you are,
just that he fooled you.”

“Have you considered, perhaps
it’s you who’s got him wrong? He offered me one of the
snowmobiles to go south with him. He said he’d like to have a
doctor along. It’s a fantastic opportunity. I’m almost
sure I’ll accept.”

If Mike was offering him a passage
south, then David had every reason to want to think well of him.
Maybe it
was
a fantastic opportunity – if Mike didn’t
dump him en route. “Did he tell you where I was?”

“Your name didn’t crop up.
His girlfriend told me later while she and Mike were having a drink
with me. She got quite chatty and mentioned you. So of course I came
as soon as I could get away.”

“That was big of you.”
Now
I’m channelling Morgan
.

He flushed. “I came, didn’t
I? Even though I got into a row with Katie over it.”

“Katie? Who the fuck’s
Katie?”

“You never used to swear.”
He was being evasive.

“Maybe I’ve changed in the
last year. Who is she?”

“She looked after me when I
turned up with my fractured foot.”

“And that gives her the right to
tell you what to do?”

“She … she’s my
girlfriend. I’m sorry.”

“Fine.” I took a deep
breath. I couldn’t see how to right this nightmare
conversation, everything was changing too fast. It was like watching
a film on fast-forward, or being a passenger in a brakeless car,
waiting for the crash as it careered along, engine screeching and
juddering.

He said, “Try to understand. I
was ill, she was nursing me, it just happened. Then she got
pregnant …”

“So you have a pregnant
girlfriend.” Next he’d be telling me he’d acquired
a dog, a Volvo and a mortgage.

“No, she had the baby end of
March. A little girl. She’s nearly two months.” He smiled
fondly. “We called her Tessa. I wish I had a photo here to show
you, she’s a sweetheart.”

So he’d got it together with
Katie within weeks of losing track of me, and now they were a happy
family unit. In the same period, all I’d done on the
relationship front was grieve for him. While I’d been crying
over him on his birthday, he no doubt had been celebrating with
Katie. I could hardly blame him for having a girlfriend when I’d
slept with Morgan, but at least I’d waited a year before being
unfaithful. And why on earth would he imagine I’d want to see
photos of his child by my replacement? How crass can you get?
Indignation rendered me speechless. As the silence lengthened David
began to look uneasy. I’d forgotten how we used to argue –
maybe it was coming back to him too.

I was still struggling to find adequate
words when there was the sound of an engine. The Polaris hove into
view, did a flashy U-turn in a fountain of snow, and stopped by my
balcony in a sudden silence. Morgan climbed over the rail and walked
in, taking off his dark glasses. He looked from me to David and back
again. I wouldn’t have said he was one of the world’s
most sensitive souls, but the tension in the room was so palpable you
could trip over it.

I said, “This is David. Morgan.”

I could see Morgan thinking back to
locate where he’d heard that name; the flicker in his eyes as
he registered who David was. He gave him an assessing glance, said
hi, then deliberately came to my side, put his arm round me and
kissed my cheek. I got a whiff of petrol from his clothes. “What’s
for breakfast?”

“Porridge.” David’s
expression was one of shocked surmise, even anger, I was gratified to
see. I wanted to tell him to leave, but maybe I’d regret it
when my own anger had died. I strove to sound calm and friendly.
“D’you want some?”

He dragged his gaze from Morgan and
said, “No, I’d better be off. Can I just have a private
word with you before I go?”

I shrugged. “Okay.” I slung
on my jacket and went with him to the balcony. We stood facing each
other. “What?”

His voice was low and concerned. “Are
you … involved with that man?”

“Yes. Not that it’s any of
your business.”

“Are you sure you know what
you’re doing? Mike told me about him. He said he was a cage
fighter with a violent temper, untrustworthy, a thief.”

I glared at him. “Here’s an
idea. Why don’t you run your life, and leave me to run mine?”

“I don’t want to see you
get hurt.”

That was rich, considering how he’d
just hurt me. “Do you know, I feel the same about you. Shall I
come and vet Katie for you?”

His face changed. “You’ve
made your point, Tori. I’m sorry it had to end like this. Be
seeing you.”

“Bye.” I stomped inside and
joined Morgan. I watched David fix his skis, put on his goggles, turn
and head south, my feelings a maelstrom. He didn’t look back.
His figure diminished in the distance.

Morgan said, “Tell me what
happened, then.”

I told him, my voice trembling with
indignation. Near the end, when I got to David’s two month-old
baby Tessa and him wishing he had a photo to show me, Morgan turned
away. This seemed a bit odd when I was talking to him – then I
noticed his shoulders shaking. He was trying not to laugh. All at
once it struck me as hilarious too, in kind of a heart-breaking way.
I wailed, “I waited a year for him!”

“How long would you wait for me?”

“Ooh, a week at least.”

“Hey! I’d give you a
fortnight.”

He hugged me. Morgan was good at hugs,
perhaps because he was so large and solid; with his arms around me
everything seemed a bit better. He made me feel safe.

Ice Diaries ~ Lexi Revellian

Thumbing through an old copy of Yellow
Pages as he ate, Morgan located a sports shop opposite Harrods which
he thought would have a block of flats above it. We hoped to collect
everything we needed from one place. After breakfast he packed a
couple of shovels and two backpacks in the Polaris’s trailer,
then turned to me.

“I’ll show you how to drive
it. Get on.” I swung my leg over the saddle. He sat behind,
holding me so he could look over my shoulder. “Feet in those
pockets. Pull up the kill switch – the red button – and
turn the key. Now pull the start cord here.” The engine
started. “Okay, that’s the brake on the left, throttle on
the right. Release the brake and gun the throttle. Gently.” The
machine leaped forward. “Don’t go too fast at first,
watch out for obstacles and take it easy turning till you get the
feel for it. Head west southwest.”

Snowmobiles have a compass on the
dashboard, handy when most of the streets have vanished under snow. I
drove carefully, wanting to do it right, keeping an eye on the
direction and the snow surface. I couldn’t stop beaming, partly
because it was such fun, rushing through the snow with Morgan’s
arms round me, and partly because showing me how to work the sled
meant he trusted me not to steal it, and he was not a man who trusted
easily. I was warming to him. I’d thought he was not my type;
noted that others might think him hot while not admitting I did. I’d
changed my mind. Hot? The guy was scorching. I’d also assumed
anyone with those muscles, a professional fighter, wouldn’t
have much of a brain. But though he’d been to a crap school and
got hardly any qualifications, I was beginning to realize Morgan was
clever as well as stoical and persistent. He was the sort of man you
could respect.

Another bonus: in his company I didn’t
have leisure to brood. Had David turned up in pre-Morgan days, after
he left I’d have spent weeks or months moping, dwelling on
every aspect of our relationship, wondering whether our/my love had
ever been real or merely a delusion, going over and over the whole
sorry business. With Morgan close to me in bed or out, full of plans
and enterprises, David didn’t enter my mind for hours at a
stretch.

We flew across London straight as a
migrating bird, and in less than ten minutes saw Harrods’
distinctive ornate pinky-beige dome emerging from the snow, with a
row of flagpoles along the roof, their flags still bravely
fluttering. You could make out the position of the Brompton Road
since many of the buildings stuck out a few metres. Not far beyond,
the rooftops gave way to a featureless expanse; the location of
Kensington Gardens. It pained me to think of all the trees frozen
beneath that bland sterile surface. Morgan told me to slow the sled,
looking about.

“It’s across from the front
of Harrods, northwest, that end rather than this.”

We went a little further, and I stopped
beside a rooftop with emergency steel ladders, the tops of lifts and
other random features sticking into the air, all with a topping of
snow. Morgan dragged the sled next to the building to make it
inconspicuous, though there was no sign of human activity, then
smashed the nearest window with a hammer and knocked out all the
glass. He gave me a backpack and took the other himself.

“What’s in here?”

“Snacks, water, bin bags,
crowbar, hammer, earplugs, goggles and a head torch. Might as well
put the torch on now.”

“Where did you get all this kit?”

“Argos and the chemist this
morning.”

“Aren’t we taking the
shovels?”

“The snow at the bottom will be
packed solid. We’re going through the walls.”

I was relieved – I remembered
digging out the corridors from shop to shop in Old Street, and it had
been hard labour, even with seven of us taking turns. I climbed into
the building after Morgan, and we made our way downwards, using
minimum force to lever open any doors that barred our way. A year of
practice had made me expert at this. The head torches were handy as
light levels diminished the further we got, and I couldn’t
think why it hadn’t occurred to me to get hold of one before.

Morgan had brought a compass. Even so,
it was difficult to retain a sense of direction in the dark. I
suggested leaving a trail to stop us getting lost on the way back. We
broke into one of the flats and searched among the lavish furnishings
till we found a Saturday Telegraph. We tore the newspaper into strips
and placed one every few metres as we went. This turned out to be
sensible; we took a wrong turning several times and had to backtrack.
The long corridors were claustrophobic, but Morgan’s presence
made it a million times better than being there on my own. Still, I
was thankful when we finally arrived at the ground floor and found
ourselves in the spacious lobby and main entrance in Brompton Road. I
shone my hand torch around. Compacted snow pressed against large
windows and glass doors, their brass fittings dull with a year’s
neglect. The floor was patterned marble, and big vases of dead
flowers stood in alcoves picked out with gold leaf.

“I think it’s to our right.
Number 92.”

With a cold chisel and hammer Morgan
chipped a small hole in the middle of a recessed wall. The noise
echoed in the tomb-like silence. He got a plastic-wrapped slab from
his backpack, longer and slimmer than a brick, unwrapped the end and
broke off a few centimetres of what looked like cream-coloured
plasticene, then pressed it into the space. I gazed in fascination as
he attached a narrow metal tube, which he told me was a blasting cap.
For a moment I glimpsed him as the soldier he had once been. He
glanced up.

“Put your earplugs in, goggles
on, and stand round that corner.”

Waiting on my own in the cold and dark,
I heard the faint scratch of a match. Morgan appeared, and drew me
further away. We stood for a couple of minutes, and I wondered what
happened if the charge failed to go off. They tell you not to go back
to check a firework that fails to ignite, and the possibilities for
sudden death were much greater with Semtex. I’d just started to
ask Morgan, when there was a massive whoomph and flash of light. The
floor vibrated and the air was thick with dust and smoke. I pulled my
scarf over my face to avoid breathing it in. Once we could see, we
went back to the hall, which now resembled a war zone. There was an
irregular breach in the wall with darkness beyond. Morgan peered into
the hole and laughed.

“It’s a jeweller’s.”

I helped him jemmy out bricks and
debris, and when the gap was big enough climbed in after him. The
shop was small, lined with showcases, their glass mostly shattered
from the blast. Thick dust and grit lay everywhere. Morgan strolled
to the front door of the shop, bent and picked up a handful of
letters and riffled through them.

“88. The shop we want should be
two along. Unless we’re going the wrong way.” He got out
his tools. “Might as well collect the stuff from the cases.
Don’t cut yourself.”